the Michigan football program is stocked with kids getting second chances for crimes worse than following their buddies into a bad situation. what people are failing to do is separate the actions of those who faced criminal charges and sentencing for HITTING and those who faced probation for being there during the hitting.

what in the hell should Dantonio have done for four kids who got probation for their minor roles in an embarrassing event? MSU already lost 8 kids out of this. ripping into the school for daring to list them on a roster when Grady was welcomed onto the team for worse is odd to say the least.

watching your friends/teammates hit random guys they weren't even looking for is now worse than drunk driving?

also i would LOVE to know what suspension/ramifications you think appropriate. if Dantonio is stupid enough to blindly give these kids four months suspension and no bowl game for lying, it's his bed to lie in. in the meantime i hear nobody explaining how much FURTHER they think the penalties should have gone.

And yes, I do think that this is worse than what Grady did. What Grady did was by himself. One person doing something wrong is one thing, but a group of players getting together to intentionally break the law is another thing altogether. That shows a problem with the culture on the team, not just an isolated incident.

Thanks a lot. He's a favorite for the class of 2028. Word is he's a Michigan lean, due to family connections.

I'm not sure what his first word will be, but you can bet his first sentence will be "Go Blue." If everything goes as plans, his second sentence will be "Lane Kiffin is a douche" which is sure to please his USC grad and arbitrarily UM-hating uncle.

When I said "by himself" I meant that he didn't encourage a bunch of his teammate buddies to do it with him.

And you're right that it would have been a different story had he hit someone. But he didn't. Crimes are treated differently based on the result. If I shoot a person and kill them, or I shoot at a person and miss them, it's a very different crime. Don't give me a "well what if Grady would have kept driving and hit someone" argument. What if the MSU players would have kept punching and killed a kid? See, it doesn't really make sense.

Let's face it wouldn't we only be surprised if he actually showed back bone and sent them out the door. He's already set the precedent once you serve your prison time you'll be welcomed back with open arms. It's the University of Tennessee form of discilpine.

I guess you missed that the other two players involved in that incident are playing in the NCAA tourney. Also that of the 4 players involved in the first incident only one was kicked out of school (though another chose to transfer). (sorry I'm an excellent speller but a hunt and pecker so...)

Note the absence of editorializing. Whenever a story about Dorsey or Feagin came up, RR was criticized for giving them one chance. So far, I have seen no such criticism of Saint Dantonio giving multiple chances to jailbirds.

This is possible yes. I guess my sarcasm detector was broken then, because a lot of people would/have said exactly what he did. And while I suppose that is what makes the sarcasm work there, idk, I guess would need a /sarcasm tag on that one. Too subtle.

Tater, you are looking at this rationally ---- not how these stories are being manipulated by the local media to form the "truth" in the public's eye:

1a) These Sparties pled out... they admitted they did it and admitted they were wrong. That is the right thing to do. They served their time and should be commended for taking responsibility.
1b) And good for St. Dantonio for his support... when you see only one set of footprints in the sand it's not because Coach abandoned you, it's because Coach was carrying you. That's team. That's love. Second chances are good (unless you are a third stringer).

2) Obviously Dorsey lied and hid the truth when he refused to take responsibility. He got lucky with an acquital because everyone knows he is a criminal. RR awards kids that get away with crime by paying for their college just so he can steal a 4-star athlete.

"I take Cousins for the Misdemeanor because it'd probably be, you know, protesting an abortion clinic.... and... Dantonio for felony AWESOMENESS .... and I think Greg Jones might kill someone on the field this year bc OMGREGJONES"

You'd think Dantonio would at least wait till the players fulfilled some requirement of their sentence (150 hours community service) before reinstating anyone. This sure sets a good example: If you are a MSU football player who commits a crime, all you have to do is show up to your court date and plead guilty, and you're back in coach dantanna's good graces.

Everyone hands out second chances. The coaches only really care if it directly effects the team (missed practice, etc). I don't understand why the school didn't expel them. That's a huge black eye and bad precedent for any school to set regardless of whether the attackers play football.

That may be, I'm not arguing one way or the other. I just think it's a really bad precedent to be seen giving very strong young men who spend a great deal of time being encouraged to be violent (normal football) Carte Blanche to attack other students with minimal repercussions. I'd be upset if I were a student and they were still there.

This wasn't a dumb decision by a couple kids, it was a large premeditated act.

Her story is just basic reporting, no commentary. No need to link it; but here are some vintage Dantonio quotes from her Freep.com story:

“It’s been four months since these guys have taken part in any football activities,” Dantonio said. “Without question, it’s been a very long time. I feel like they’ve endured the football end of things, the judicial process and the public ridicule or whatever you want to call it."

“Guys make mistakes, guys pay the consequences, we move forward.”

Dantonio did not elaborate on the status of wide receiver Fred Smith, who received jail time, saying that Smith “needed to take care of his judicial responsibilities first.” Smith did not appear on the spring roster.

“Every one of those players still involved with this are still my players, whether they’re here or elsewhere,” Dantonio said. “I will stand behind them and try to support them in anything that they do because I want them to be successful in life. We wish them all the best and we need to move forward.”

Rodriguez did not elaborate on the status of Justin Feagin, who received jail time, saying that Feagin “needed to take care of his judicial responsibilities first.” Feagin did not appear on the spring roster.

“Feagin is still my player, whether he's here or elsewhere,” Rodriguez said. “I will stand behind him and try to support him in anything that he does because I want him to be successful in life. We wish him all the best and we need to move forward.”

If I was a sports "journalist" for a national outlet (ESPN, SI, etc) I would be writiing a story about the local media's hypocracy and the inherent lack of integrity in relation to the "reporting" of these two stories (Sparty beatdown convictions and jail time verse Dorsey acquital)

Hey, Crime Reporter... can't you get on this???? This could be your springboard to becoming "Sports Crime Reporter" on ESPN.

I have contacts, and I have spoken to some of them about this, but I don't see anything happening. In my experience, newspapers and newspaper columnists/writers do not call out others in the profession, at least at this level. Maybe in New York or LA, but not here.

I would love to write about it personally, but I have an agenda as well, in that I am a fanatical Michigan follower. At the same time, I can take off the glasses and see the big picture.

And that is what bothers me most. The double standard is so blatantly obvious yet these journalists (I hate even calling them that now) are given free reign to write this bullshit to serve their twisted goals.

My advice is to keep e-mailing the paper, keep calling and let them know this is unacceptable. Send it to the editors (not just sports either) and the publisher. Demand to speak with the managing editor, or if he/she won't respond, the head editor in charge of the entire product.

In one of the PS2 versions of NCAA football (I don't recall the exact year), players would get into trouble. You had to pick a punishment for them, and if you were too wimpy about it the NCAA would come calling. I'm just wondering if perhaps Mr. Dantonio was playing Madden that year.

I remember this feature, I hated it. I couldn't stand having good players get in trouble, I always went light on them and then hammered the 3rd string guy to keep the NCAA calm. Does that mean I'm a Dantonio disciple? AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Oh wait, I was playing a video game, not dealing with real life and people. Silly Dantonio

You wrote, "the Michigan football program is stocked with kids getting second chances for crimes worse than following their buddies into a bad situation."

Lemme do some elaboratin' for you. The point, I think my fellow MGoBloggers will agree with me, is that one such kid, Demar Dorsey, under considerably milder circumstances caused a gigantic ruckus that specifically caused the Free Press to dispatch Mr. Drew Sharpton to Ann Arbor for an otherwise routine press conference, to cross-examine Coach Rich Rodriguez about Dorsey and then do not one but a series of opinion hit-pieces on the topic.

Which kids are good and bad, and which kids actually deserve second chances is anybody's guess. I'm not really caring a whole lot about the particular kids in East Lansing.

What gets me is that one isolated case causes huge consternation over the kind of human being Rich Rodriguez is, while Dantonio is never questioned. At least not by the Free Press.

And it may be that the Free Press regards MSU as an out-state school and not really part of Detroit, which is the Free Press' decision to make. And it may be that the lowly standards of MSU football in recent years, and the lofty standards of Michigan, make for unfair comparisons that the Free Press can't quite figure out. Maybe they think that under those circumstances, Dantonio is over-achieving and Rodriguez is under-achieving. Or, as others have said, maybe MSU football doesn't rate Michigan-type scrutiny because other than George Blaha, nobody gives two shits about Michigan State Spartan football.

In any event, we shall see what sort of serious-character-questions this raises, for the Free Press sportswriting staff, with respect to Dantonio. One place to look will be to see if Mick McCabe sheds his cloak as Preps Reporter to once again be The Voice of Preps Morality and question Dantonio on his selections of players. Like, uh, his diatribe against Dorsey and Rodriguez.

Dantonio committed a malapropism. He should have said, "judicially," insofar as he was referring to the time-consuming process of having a judge rule on a pending criminal matter, as opposed to dispatching matters more quickly and directly as a matter of team discipline.

Indeed, he did use the word "judicial" in a Freep quote that Shannon Sharp wrote up.

Dantonio said "judiciously" when he should have said "judicially."

My best guess is that these are vocabulary waters that are way over Coach Dantonio's head.

This is serious garbage. These guys committed major offenses. This is not a "kid got drinking underage" or "kid got caught with pot" type of situation. These are major athletes organizing themselves to beat the shit out of non-athletes. They aren't that young either, Dell and Cunningham are both above 21 I believe, it's not like their 15 and don't know right from wrong.

As much as I hate schools like ND and OSU, I have a certain level of respect for them as football teams and programs. I have no respect at all for Michigan State and their overall athletic program. I think it projects very poorly on our state and conference as a whole.

They get confused with U-M. A lot. Literally, no fucking joke at all, I had someone tell me he was a graduate of MSU law school....by accident....because he'd intended to apply to U-M and got the two mixed up. And didn't realize it until he was actually in East Lansing.

That being the case, Sparty needs to shape the hell up, because, yeah, it's reflecting badly on us.

one of my good friends went to state this past weekend where her friends roommate got "into an altercation with a big black guy". At the end of the party this guy was waiting outside for him with 2 other guys and they beat the crap out of him. She saw these 3 guys the next night and asked if they were at the party last night, they confirmed, she got names and numbers..I know what your wondering. Yes, they are on the football team. No I don't know the names or anything else that is going to happen. I told her to turn the names in though if that counts for anything.

This whole situation is fucked up. I have several (MANYMANYMANY) Sparty co-workers and a few in the family, and to a man (term used loosely)not one of them so much as knew about the Rather Hall "incident", much less that the same damn thing happened last year. Why don't they know? Because our local media doesn't report it. But my Sparty brother sure knew about a "lot of things" that Rodriguez has done to show he's a scumbag, which sent me into a dizzying spittle flecked condescending RAGE, trying to 'splain to him what the real story is.

"You're going to fall down at times," I'll agree that we all make mistakes, but most of us have consequences too. DUI, lose your privilege to drive. Adultery, lose the privilege of 70% of your paycheck. For a football player, most of whom are at school solely due to their football prowess, the privilege of "playing football" needs to be taken from them (at least for a while).

"We have the same problems that society has in a lot of ways, and because we live in a fish bowl..." Really!?!? Can't imagine what I'd be up against if me and 10+ buddies, (maybe visiting campus for a football game, got into minor scuffle with a couple of students) tracked down a group of kids in a dorm and assaulted them and their friends. I can guarantee you one thing, I'd never be allowed on campus again.

The idea that these poor guys are somehow either more suspect, more villified, or condemned more harshly just because they're players, is CRAP.

It sickens me that the dividing line seems to be 'the justice system playing itself out'; as in, so long as the verdict has been rendered, we can move on now. I would whole-heartedly agree that in these cases, these guys should be required to "earn back" a second chance by at least completing some of their punishments before being given back all their privileges.

and signature reminded me of the last M-MSU hockey game in East Lansing. We get there, pile into Yost West, assemble into our self-proclaimed student section, and are asked to SIT DOWN. At a season-ended college hockey game.

Not only that, apparently the EL police confiscated a cowbell from the M student section the night before and never gave it back, meanwhile at this game some Sparty joker must have gotten carpal tunnel from beating his own cowbell the entire night with no reaction from the Green Fuzz.

I don't think anyone was saying that a DUI isn't a bad thing. But not all DUI's are created equal. If you are found sitting in a running car on the side of the road drunk, this is different than being drunk and driving wrecklessly, getting into an accident and injuring someone or worse.

Also, I wouldn't call this MSU situation "being at a fight where punches were thrown." This was a premeditated "let's get a bunch of our football player buddies together and beat the shit out of people" event.

In my opinion there are 2 things that really matter when determining how wrong something is. First, is there any harm/damage done? This can either be in the form of property damage or physical harm to a person. Second is intent. What did this person intend to do? Did they make a bad choice and hurt someone in the process? Or was the sole purpose of their action to hurt someone or something? In the MSU case, there was significant harm done to multiple people, and this harm was exactly what the parties involved intended to do.

I don't know how to figure out relative badness of DUI vs. fighting, but I do know that there's a big difference between the garden-variety "Fightin In Da Club" (to use the EDSBS term) and gathering up a group of people expressly to go somewhere else for the sole purpose of beating people up. Something that has now happened twice in about a year's span with MSU football players.

i'm not arguing that going from the FOOTBALL BANQUET to a frat CHARITY event ON CAMPUS isn't stupid (i even e-yelled!). what i'm getting as is how ridiculous it is that posters are ridiculing Dantonio for putting kids who were given probation by the state back on the roster. where were these people when Grady was brought back to the team?

if this was winston or jenrette there'd be a point. with 4 kids who were given probation for being there like idiots? not so much.

i would consider being behind the wheel, driving to a point and then more or less passing out WAY worse than going to an event 'en masse' knowing the entire fraternity was there to watch your friend fight 1-2 guys they're looking for. both are HUGELY idiotic but the notion that this 'second chance' is somehow egregious compared to the chance given by RR is absurd.

but it can very reasonably be argued it is NOT an accident to know you shouldn't be behind the wheel. further, your argument "struggles" because the courts found none of these players were guilty of striking someone. everyone on here would have a point if these were the aggressors but it's been already found they followed along dumbly but received probation bc there involvement was so very minor.

Typically, purposely aiding and abetting a crime is treated the same as actual commission of that crime. I consider them all equally thugoriffic. Here's a question:

"Hey brah, we're going down to IPT tonight to kick all their asses. Want to come help?"

The correct answer is:

A) "No, and you should really just drop it."
B) "No, but have fun."
C) "Awesome! Sounds like fun. Can't wait."

If MSU and the Freep are going to throw the "courts may have acquitted Dorsey but he's still a thug" stone at us, then I'm gonna throw it right back through their own glass house. At the very least Dorsey wasn't under the direct guidance of Rodriguez when he went out and did that stuff, whereas it's pretty obvious these players know they can get away with being THUGZ 4 LYFE under Dantonio because he allows that stuff to go on.

As for the DUI thing: yes, obviously it should be known that you shouldn't be behind the wheel, but that is still, at worst, purposely negligent. What these Sparties did was set out with the stated intent to hurt people. That's not negligence.

i have no argument that their actions deserve the attention they're getting. i think a crime in which they've been issued probation for does not warrant removal from the team. and if they're not going to be removed, they would be placed on the spring roster. the end.

I get it, and I weighed it out knowing I was really mad. But here's the thing, WHY was I so mad? It wasn't just 'cause it was Sparty...

I agree with W.LA: Look at the intent. This is mob mentality. This is NOT the first time for them (not just Sparty, but this SAME GROUP of young men).

A spontaneous bar fight is one thing. Could someone end up dead? Sure. At least it's a momentary lapse of judgement, and based on raw emotion.

Holding onto anger, to the point of not being able to let go of it after walking away (long and far enough to round up a posse), and then planning a crime is a whole different story. It suggests a total lack of self-discipline, respect for law or humanity, and the total loss of fear for consequence.

Nothing (visible anyway) done by MSU would suggest that the school or football program has taken a strong stand to let these guys know that this is not acceptable.

i'm not an MSU apologist. however, the more i look at the situation and see how it has become readily apparent who came making sure it wasn't 18 frat guys versus winston, the more i agree with the charges they faced and subsequent punishment. i'm not arguing winston is a moron. or jenrette. or the 4 other guys who faced more damning penalties. hell, to a degree i think it's worse that some of the guys lied to Dantonio, played in the bowl and THEN were identified.

i think it's absurd that the courts said "these guys will get probation, nothing more" and the board is all up in arms that they're on the roster for Spring Practice. i'm expecting the same posters will throw a brick through Schembechler Hall if another UM player gets a DUI or mild misdemeanor and is sat for 3-5 games mid-season.

if the law says they weren't more responsible than being a part of this bullshit circus at a frat potluck, why in the hell would the team do more than 4 months probation from practice, etc.

Look, I'm a guy who's done the "wing/beer" stop off many a time after work. Would I have blown a .08 ever? Doubt it, but who knows, close, probably a few times. Why not cross the line entirely? I've got some understanding of what's involved as far as consequence, and the human element weighs on me more than the legal - killing/injuring someone would haunt me longer than some license loss. Also, I've got some friends who look out for each other to make sure none of us gets to that "trouble" point.

I get the "they were just there to make sure Winston didn't get piled on by a bunch of engineers". However, why couldn't any one, if not the group of them, say "Dude, you F**ked Up doing this before, let it go"? How about, "Man, get over it, let's go party and find some fine tail, being that we're MSU football and all"?

I get that some of these guys were "bystanders", but it doesn't make it OK to sit by and watch a crime, especially one that you know is going to unfold, AND the exact same one you already did previously and was met with consequence (at least for Winston in terms of jail time). Did it not occur to any of them that it might not be a good idea? Did they not fear?

THAT is the problem. Either this team thinks they run around with impunity, or they don't care. That's dangerous ground to walk on, especially if these young men don't learn differently (differently from the idea of using both violence AND their physical size/strength advantage over weaker individuals) before they leave and end up like Plax, Charles, etc except this time it'll be violent crime.

It is readily apparent that the punishments being handed down by the legal system are NOT influencing them. How about hitting them closer to home?

however, grady was beyond a "wing/beer" stop. he was passed out behind the wheel.
nobody is questioning the failure in maturity. however, a failure in maturity where their actions did not result in a harm when they could have is material and relevant. it's why they got probation for their conspiratorial roles and not more severe punishment.

the punishments handed out did not influence jenrette and winston. this is their first strike. carr handed them out, rodriguez did as well. the removal of players is important. a removal of all players, especially those who received PROBATION for their roles, is not required.

that I haven't called for their careers. I said they should have to "earn" it back, as in it should be taken away at least temporarily (in my mind that means handling at least SOME of your societal/legal debt first, and maybe counseling). The article talked of their "reinstatement" - being back with the team - as in no longer suspended; not just that they were listed on spring rosters.

I am not for giving UM players any preferences when they cross the line (no galss house here). I've been largely OK with RR's handling of things so far. I would like to have hoped that a teammate would have seen Grady's condition and stopped him. In there's a "silver lining", at least there weren't 4 other guys in the car watching him drive like that and being OK with it. Also, I'm glad RR handled BooBoo the way he did - did not give the second chance "up front" and watch for further transgressions, but instead set high requirements, and left the door open until it showed he couldn't/didn't want to change.

That's what I'd like to see out of ANY coach. I believe they have that RESPONSIBILITY. Perhaps Dantonio should make them all wear Winston's jersey number through spring/summer/fall to remind them how they let themselves/their school/the team/their teammate down by doing nothing.